During its 2025 regular legislative session, the Connecticut General Assembly made a number of changes to how the State funds special education, including the creation of a new formulaic grant to support special education services.
Designed to help town and school district leaders plan for the future and address budgetary questions, these interactive models provide district-level and town-level funding estimates for the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) grant, board of education magnet school grant, RESC magnet school grant, and Agricultural Science and Technology Education (ASTE) program grant.
Connecticut cities and towns receiving Municipal Revenue Sharing grants are currently subject to a municipal spending cap, which limits how much they can increase their expenditures year-over-year. If a municipality exceeds the spending cap, it is subject to a reduction in its Municipal Revenue Sharing grant. This FAQ document discusses the municipal spending cap and its impact on Municipal Revenue Sharing grants.
This frequently asked questions document discusses Connecticut’s minimum budget requirement (MBR), which prohibits a town from budgeting less for education than it did in the previous year unless it meets specific exceptions.
This document details how Connecticut could use a needs-capacity formula to distribute non-education municipal aid to the state's cities and towns and help address municipal fiscal disparities. Under a needs-capacity formula, municipalities with the greatest level of fiscal disparity would receive a greater level of state funding, while municipalities with the capacity to pay for services through their own revenue raising capacities receive less or no state funding.
The State of Connecticut contains 169 towns with a wide range of wealth and resident needs. Currently, the State of Connecticut provides financial aid to towns through a variety of statutory and non-statutory grant programs. The current structure for non-education town aid does not sufficiently address the underlying municipal fiscal disparities that are caused by the unequal costs of delivering services and the low revenue raising capacity of towns in Connecticut. The purpose of this policy briefing is to introduce and examine how Connecticut can address municipal fiscal disparities by using a needs-capacity formula to distribute non-education town aid.